The Chinese Way: Breaking Soccer in the World’s Biggest Nation
China’s president, Xi Jinping, wants to be “the world football superpower" by 2050. Not a world football super power. The superpower. He firmly believes soccer is a force for cultural good and financial good, bringing economic diversity to a country currently powered by manufacturing.
And it would appear that Xi and his countrymen are putting their money where their mouth is to make soccer the dragon’s share of a forecasted UK£550 billion sports industry. In 2015 the Chinese Super League sold its broadcast rights in a five-year deal worth RMB8 billion (US$1.2 billion) and, in the last transfer window, two players who probably by their own admission hadn’t quite conquered the world stage shunned the lure of European soccer to play in China in big money deals. Alex Teixeira turned his back on a deal at Liverpool FC to move to free spending Jiangsu Suning for UK£38.4 million and Porto’s Jackson Martinez moved to Guangzhou Evergrande for UK£31 million.
And it’s not just China that is investing in its game. The borders are open to western brands stampeding into relatively unchartered territory and trying to capitalise on the under-30s audience that make up approximately one third of China’s population and are driving China’s almost insatiable thirst for branded consumer goods. Chinese national team equipment partner Nike has seen its sales jump 30 per cent in China in the third quarter of the year while Adidas, who recently signed a three-year deal with the Chinese education ministry to promote soccer in schools, saw its own regional revenue grow by 19 per cent in the second quarter.
Easy, right? Wrong. China is not without serious barriers to entry, headaches and frustration. China isn’t like any other market where retail, media and advertising are concerned, because of its size, complexity and diversity. It can’t be looked at as a single market but as a collection of evolving, complex and fragmented markets. And even if brands like Adidas, Nike, New Balance and Puma get in on the action, another problem is the rampant counterfeiting across the sports industry, which threatens to damage soccer’s prospects as a commercial success for brands. 70 per cent of the world’s counterfeit goods are made in China, many of which are offered to the growing army of Chinese soccer fans on their home turf.
Complexity is inherent in the Chinese market and any brand that wants to be there will have to deal with that. But the answer, unfortunately, is not to simplify. A growing sense of self-identity and independence among the under-30s is now the driving force in China’s consumer habits, not the middle-aged, middle-class consumer that drove China into the third millennium. And that sense of self-identity means the old (but not very old) assumption that slapping a Union Jack or Stars and Stripes on the label moves products doesn’t work anymore. Lazy stereotyping will get you into trouble; a cookie-cutter approach will get you into trouble. What has worked elsewhere or before can’t be assumed to work again now. To succeed in China, you need insights from China. Insights from the confident, culturally aware and globally connected under-30 audience. A deeper understanding of modern Chinese culture and identity, and how that mixes with the opportunity presented by sports and soccer specifically, is the key to success.
As an example of the differences between western and Chinese under-30s, the top five celebrities followed on social media platforms by that demographic in China are all businessmen and women. The same is definitely not the case in Europe or North America. That is not to say celebrity or athlete endorsement doesn’t matter – it definitely does – but what those athletes say and where they say it needs to be different. China and the west don’t even use the same social media platforms. Weibo continued to grow in 2015, ending the year with over 200 million monthly active users, and soccer is the most followed sport on the platform, with more than 35 European teams and more than 70 million total followers. Three of the top five most-followed athletes outside of China, including Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar, still don’t have a presence on the platform.
If we look at the establishment of soccer as a spectator and broadcast sport in the USA we see a cautionary tale of stop-start growth and initially low audiences, and that in a country with sporting performance baked into its consciousness. But now, after 20 years of existence, Major League Soccer (MLS) is the third-highest attended soccer league in the world and in 2014 signed a US$90 million per season broadcast rights deal, nearly five times the value of the league's previous deal. Why? Because after numerous false starts, the USA found its own way to market and activate soccer, an American way to engage audiences not only with its own league but with England’s Premier League, Spain’s La Liga and more. Yes, it’s high-energy and the terminology feels anachronous to other countries. But it is another country and another culture. It needs its own identity and set of rules.
China needs time to find its set of rules and brands who want in must play a part. What is it about the Premier League (and other European leagues) that they want, and how do they want to talk about it? How can sponsors activate Chinese soccer in a way that is unique? How can soccer brands and sponsors position themselves in between the European and Chinese games? On one side there’s the ultra-real, tradition-based way driven by fan tribalism and an inherent mistrust of over-commercialisation born out of a sense of ownership due to a long-term relationship with the game (and actual ownership in the case of many Spanish and German clubs). And then there’s the more aspirational, newer and maybe more naive way, where it is a new sport being marketed to a new audience who are new to the game, new to money and in a state of growth and change.
How can the sponsors adapt to a culture that is at once nationalistic and concerned with the greater good, but also newly ambitious for self-fulfillment and personal gain? How can it reward those early adopters and keep them close? Can the tribal aspect of soccer inherent in the West be used to connect a fanbase who are predominantly from single-child policy families and currently look to social media to connect with one another more than any other nation in the world? Again, insight and knowledge of that market is a foundation of any approach. Agility and speed of deployment to a rapidly evolving ambitious audience is another.
Can brands and sponsors sacrifice personal gain to adopt a more category approach to soccer to serve a purpose higher than their own brand? That is to say, making the game fulfill its potential in a market of two billion people, where everyone can win? Adidas thinks so, as evidenced by its school deal.
The key to success in soccer for sponsors is to echo the values of the new under-30s Chinese market: on one hand the new China – independent, ambitious, savvy and connected – but at the same time connected to their traditional values and more concerned with the greater good and improvement for everyone.
Matt Bennett is chief creative officer at ZAK. This article was originally published on SportsPro.
